Western European shipments of hardcopy peripherals (HCP) declined 6.7% year over year to 3.8 million units in the third quarter of 2022 (Q3, 2022). Shipment value increased 7.2% year over year during the quarter to $1.935 billion, according to new data from the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Supply-chain issues continue to affect the market and are not likely to be fully rectified until 2023. Some brands are struggling to meet consumer and business demands while others are taking advantage of their misfortune and are seeing their shipments increase.

Highlights from the quarter include:

•     Inkjet shipments declined 13.92% in Q3, with consumer devices contracting 13.7% year-on-year while business inkjet devices declined 15.2% year-on-year.
•     Overall laser shipments increased 14.9% year-on-year in Q3 as some backorders were fulfilled, but it must be noted that the quarter for the previous year was one of the worst quarters on record.
•      Colour shipments saw year-on-year increase of 12.9% while monochrome shipments saw an increase of 16.2%.
•    The monochrome A4 single-function printer segment remained the largest segment followed by the monochrome A4 multifunction (MFP) segment.
•      HP retains the overall market leadership with 38.0% market share even though year-on-year shipments declined, and Canon was one of the better performers with year-on-year shipments increasing strongly, especially in the inkjet segment, to take 23.9% market share.
•     The chart below shows the top 4 brands by unit shipments for the past 5 quarters.

“Newly manufactured devices are still being used to fulfill backorders across the industry and some are struggling worse than others with their inventories, meaning that those brands with greater stock levels are seeing their sales increase, and the supply and demand issues are likely to continue well into 2023, for some at least,” said Phil Sargeant, senior program director, Western European Imaging, Hardware Devices, and Document Solutions group, IDC.

Main country highlights:

• Germany: Overall shipments declined 7.2% with inkjets being the worst affected, declining 13.4%, but these were counterbalanced by laser shipments increasing 4.4%.
• France: Shipments declined 9.6% and saw the same trend as with Germany as inkjet shipments declined 14.0% and laser shipments increased 9.1%.
• The U.K.: The overall market contracted 9.5% in Q3 as inkjet shipments declined 11.3% and laser shipments only saw an increase of 1.0%.
• Italy: The Italian market was one of the better-performing countries with overall shipments increasing 3.6%. Laser shipments saw a large jump of 51.3% while inkjets, as with other countries, declined 15.2%.
• Spain: Spain was one of the poorer performing countries with overall shipments down year-on-year 16.7% and even though laser shipments increased year-on-year 14.4%, inkjet shipments declined 27.6%